http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/05/07/news/doc48212cdcb705e313930687.txt

Blagojevich flip-flops on decision to close prisons

5/7/2008

Bloomington Pantagraph

Kurt Erickson

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s decision to close a state prison is a reversal of what his own prison experts said just a year ago.

In May 2007, an Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman said top brass at the agency had no plans to close any state prisons.

But in February, a plan to close a portion of Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet emerged following the unveiling of Blagojevich’s proposed budget.

On Friday, Corrections chief Roger Walker said in a letter the agency was abandoning plans to close Stateville and instead focusing on closing the 1,650-inmate Pontiac Correctional Center.

That stands in contrast to what Walker spokesman Derek Schnapp said in an e-mail exchange last year.

Asked whether the department believes there is a need to close additional prisons, Schnapp answered succinctly.

“No,” Schnapp wrote on May 23, 2007.

The proposal to shutter the 137-year-old prison in Pontiac marks the second time since 2004 that Blagojevich has targeted the maximum-security lockup for closure. At stake are more than 550 employees and an economic benefit to Livingston County of nearly $40 million.

In his letter, Walker said moving the inmate population from Pontiac to the state’s unused prison in Thomson makes more sense than closing Stateville.

On Tuesday, Schnapp was asked what had triggered the agency’s change of direction. He did not directly address the question.

Rather, Schnapp said the agency has made opening Thomson a priority. It was completed in 2001 but never opened because of budget problems.

“Our goal is to open Thomson Correction (sic) Center,” Schnapp noted. “Thomson will allow us to single cell the inmate population at Pontiac, which is mostly segregation and protective custody.”

The agency wants to close Pontiac by January. Lawmakers have vowed to block the move.

A public hearing on the proposal could come as early as July 3.

State Rep. Keith Sommer, R-Morton, said the latest announcement of Pontiac’s proposed demise comes just weeks after the prison was visited by top Corrections administrators and representatives of the governor’s office.

After that meeting, Sommer said, the department said there wasn’t any reason to be concerned about Pontiac being closed.

“They said, ‘Don’t worry about it,”’ Sommer said.

State Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa, and Sommer, both of whom represent the Pontiac area, want a moratorium on prison closings so a process can be worked out in which there is a defined approach to major prison changes within the department.

“These communities are being whipsawed,” Rutherford said, pointing to the on-again, off-again opening and closing talk affecting Pontiac, Thomson and Stateville.